It’s official. The Suitcase is the greatest episode of television in the history of the medium.
Recently The Ringer released their list of the 100 Greatest episodes of the 21st century, even though it’s 2018. One could make the argument that the last twenty years of television have been the best era yet. It started with The Sopranos in 1999 and has continued with shows like Games of Thrones and Better Call Saul. In my opinion though, one show has stood out against all the rest. Mad Men.
I started watching Mad Men my sophomore year in college. I figured I would give it a chance and see how it was, never really figuring that I would get really into it. I was wrong. I had never seen a TV show with characters as complex as Don Draper or Peggy Olson. They were flawed, sometimes awful people, that you cared about so much.
On the surface Draper seems like a classic 1960s cheating husband with a lot of money. He seems like a womanizer and that’s because he is, but he is also so much more than that. In reality he’s Dick Whitman, a man who took the identity of a fellow soldier who died in Korea. He was escaping his rough home life on a farm with an abusive family. He was trying to become someone of status. He managed to completely change his identity to the point where even his wife had no idea who he really was.
On the other side you have Peggy Olson, who when you first meet her is Don’s soft spoken secretary. She, like Don, wants to be someone else. Eventually she works her way up into an assertive advertiser. She looks up to Don because she wants to be him, a powerful Creative Director who appears to have found hit the lottery in life.
The Suitcase is the 7th episode of the fourth season. Most of the episode is Don and Peggy staying late after work, working on an idea for Samsonite Suitcases. What Peggy doesn’t know is that Don is forcing her to work late because he is avoiding an unpleasant phone call.
The episode starts with Don being very hard on Peggy, telling her that he hates her idea for the Samsonite advertisement. She yells at him for never properly giving her credit. She thinks that he has the perfect life, where no matter what he takes credit for the great ideas, even if they’re not his own.
When Don came back from Korea with his new identity he was confronted by the wife of the real Don Draper. Eventually the two developed a close friendship. She truly was the only person that ever knew who Dick Whitman really was. The phone call that Don is avoiding is one that will tell him that she had died.
The episode is a series of back and forth conversations between Peggy and Don. It’s a unique moment when you see two people who are so similar but don’t seem to realize it. One thing that makes this episode so great is that even if you had never seen a single episode of the show you could follow what is happening and be emotionally drawn into the story. Don for the first time is telling things about his past...his real past, to Peggy. He tells her about growing up poor on a farm and about seeing his father die. She starts to learn where he really came from and who he really is.
Meanwhile Peggy’s boyfriend has organized a surprise birthday dinner for her in which he has invited her whole family. When she tells the boyfriend that she can’t leave work for dinner they end up breaking up over the phone. She tells Don that if the boyfriend really knew her he would have known that she wanted a romantic dinner with just the two of them. “He doesn’t know me”, she says. It truly is an episode of people showing who they really are.
When Don eventually makes the call it’s after a full night of heavy drinking. He bursts into tears in the most powerful performance that Jon Hamm has ever given. Peggy comforts him. She now knows that there is so much more to Don than what lies on the surface.
To me this is the best character study I’ve ever seen on TV. I recommend Mad Men to everyone. It’s an important show and will be remembered forever.
Comments